pay: tututime
pay: episode 1 of an anime has never made me literally shed a tear before
pay: like ive gotten close. ive felt like crying during fruits basket episode 1. but i actually shed a real tear

PRINCESS TUTU EPISODE 1

Ballet Anime.

No i'm not fucking telling you anything about it i want you to go in as blind as i was. It's really good.

the artstyle is very unique and fun and cute and good. the character writing is SO good it made me SHED A TEAR. the plot and concept is VERY INTERESTING and i have A MILLION theories in my head about what it all means and how it all comes together.

it also utilizes a lot of classical ballet music like swan lake/nutcracker style. i always forget how beautiful classical music is until i hear it in a context thats not Stereotypical Rich Fancy Person's house.

in total this is a VERY story-driven anime and i WANT TO break my FUCKING rule again But i won't. I Won't. unless someone wants to watch princess tutu with me because i think it should be as well-known as evangelion or inuyasha. the character writing style kind of reminds me of doremi a little bit but i don't know how old doremi is maybe its a chicken/egg situation ANYWAY.

WATCH THIS ONE!!!!!!!!!!!! IT;S FUCKING GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!At least this first episode is because i have no idea what will happen after this point!!!!! but i have FAITH.

its one of those to where i wish i watched it as a kid because i just have a feeling that it would have altered my brain in some way/shape/form.

do i want to watch more?

you go re-read what i wrote up there and see what you think my answer to that question is.

favorite screenshots

I LOVE THIS ARTSTYLE IT'S SO CUTE!!!!! the way it stylizes people is so unique and GOOD. and it's also able to be really elegant and beautiful when it has to be. the ending scene is literally breathtaking im trying to include spoiler-free screenshots just to show off what im talking about. it feels so dreamlike while still leaving room for being silly!!!




this sequence near the start of the episode also made me laugh



Quack! im going to be thinking really really hard about this show for such a long time

WITCH HUNTER ROBIN EPISODE 1

this episode is about 4 minutes of engaging combat and 20 minutes of People Talking To Each Other In Different Rooms.

the episode opens up REALLY interesting with 3 different people talking to each other over radio communications. they even put different radio static filters on each voice actor depending on how good their connection is!

they've been following this strange guy for what seems like a few weeks. he deviates from his normal routine, and the guy that's closest to him, haruto, gives chase against orders from his other two radio buddies. he also shoots little vials of green liquid at this guy? he misses every single shot though.

during the chase, we learn that the guy we're chasing is able to control WIND too! Huh... kinda like some sort of magic thing...? like a witch might do, perhaps?

the guy escapes to a rooftop, and just when he lets his guard down, another hunter appears standing directly over him. this is amon i think is his name? he shoots this dude like 12 times offscreen while the camera fades to black. the shooting sounds are more like little pewpewpews from scifi guns than real gunshots so it sounds a little silly to me

Alright i think that's enough excitement. Do you want to spend 10 minutes watching different people in a strange office environment talk to each other? Yes you do!!!!

we see a bunch of scenes cutting around various rooms of this police-but-not-police building, with different characters chatting about things that definitely sound like things i should care about, but because i don't know or care about any of these characters it's just really boring.


one interesting thing does happen though! a mysterious young girl enters into the lobby of this building, wearing an all-black dress. she's here to speak with amon, but he's busy right now, so She's forced to wait in the fucking lobby.

we're also introduced to miss dojima here! she's a mean tired lady and i like her hair. she notices the girl waiting and assumes that it's just amon's girlfriend. she heads up to the main building and ignores the girl entirely.


eventually, during the middle of all of this chatter about things i dont care about, the chief officer is FINALLY NOTIFIED of the girl waiting for amon downstairs. dojima relays her assumption that it's just amon's girlfriend, and the chief goes "WHO CARES??? get her OUT OF HERE. SEND HER AWAY!!!"

So they send her away and the lobby guy tells her a place where she can get some coffee.

BACK TO MORE FUCKINGGGGGG CHATTER AND CONVERSATIONS. but this time its cut around! so we'll see dojima and the chief talking about dojima not taking her job seriously (What's her job? Is it the same thing that we saw in the opening?), cut to THE HACKER character, michael, literally just listening to music and #Hacking, to a scene of amon literally just standing somewhere Brooding, and then finally to a scene of this mysterious girl, The Only Character That I Care About. And then it cuts away far too soon. Why? THE CHATTER!!! WE GOTTA HEAR ALLLL ABOUT THE CHATTER!!!!!!!!

this is michael hacking btw. and every time it cuts to him it starts playing like electronic dance music LOUDLY (i presume this is what he's listening to). i like michael


Okay. Admist all of the fucking chatter, we finally learn some new information! this is an organization that hunts Witches. and 6 months ago they lost a hunter, so they're FINALLY getting sent a new hunter.

and then everyone starts complaining about the new replacement hunter being late, and actually the replacement wasn't on the plane that they were told that she was going to be on, and she's just going to come here by herself, and oh my god, the chief HATES young hunters because they're never PATIENT and they don't WAIT and-

hang on.

She?

Ohhhhhh.

That mysterious girl that was sitting in the lobby waiting to speak to the Head witch-hunter.

Yeah.

That was the.

Yah.

Yeah.

And you guys told her to fuck off.

this information isn't told to us all at once like im telling it to you now it's meant to be like a "slow realization" that we learn throughout all of the fucking INTERSPERSED CUTS TO DIFFERENT ROOMS AND LOCATIONS AND CHARACTERS *TALKING* but i realized it like after the second goddamn time they mentioned the replacement and also the episode is named "Replacement", so it's just FRUSTRATING TO WATCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

eventually we learn mysterious girl's name while she's in the coffee shop. The Titular Robin!


so after learning all this, we follow amon and his two witch hunting pals to a warehouse heist, where they're trying to apprehend a witch that's also a... Craft User and oh my god theres a Fluffy black cat outside FORGET EVERYTHING


kitty ran away but i put treats out there. who is he

GOD fine okay ill keep talking about witch hunter robin. so this guy (he's just like a normally dressed buff guy btw) is a Craft User and amon keeps dramatically going "Craft Users..." or whatever. anyway the 3 of them are kind of getting destroyed by this guy until robin appears at the warehouse (she got driven there by the administrator and also dojima too).

robin is also a Craft User. so she can read the runes of sand left by the Other Craft User. so she edits them to be Her sand runes instead and that makes the warehouse her domain(?) so therefore she's able to distract the guy enough for the other three witch hunters to shoot him with their pewpew guns.

apparently this organization doesn't kill witches, and takes them under custody alive. Humane, right? the episode ends with amon finally meeting robin and amon goes "Do better next time and dont set things on fire." and leaves.

do i want to watch more?

No. I'm bored. maybe if someone that's already watched it tried to convince me like "no no! there's a lot more interesting scenes later on! this is just a very slow first episode!" maybe i would try to consider it. it's just boring and doesn't explain its premise very good. and i know ive complained in the past about expositiony tropes that get you up to speed very quickly but like.

What the fuck is a witch?

The moments that are supposed to teach us What A Witch Is literally don't teach us anything. the wind guy just like... exuded wind? from his body? without doing anything?

but the craft user had Sand Runes placed around and controlled the sand stuck to the bottom of peoples' shoes with chanting and hand motions. so craft users are the ones that actually have to put in effort for their magic? IS IT MAGIC??? WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CRAFT USER WITCH AND A REGULAR WITCH???

there's so much fucking talking amongst the main characters of the Main Organization it literally feels like i just walked into some office building and started eavesdropping on the most boring conversations known to man. the first conversation we hear inside the building is A Guy Getting Mad At Another Guy For Using Too Many Bullets (He Used Five). I DON'T FUCKING CARE!!!!!!!

favorite screenshots

the thing i liked the most about this show was the background/environmental shots. there's so much care and detail put into these backgrounds they're REALLY nice and i feel like i don't see near as many detailed backgrounds nowadays. they really make me feel like im there, ESPECIALLY the interior ones!



unfortunately that has the downside of making me feel like im actually stuck in a strange stuffy office with boring conversations. whatever

i didnt realize how weird dojima's stomach and waist looked here i just noticed that. but this one singular moment was funny to me


its possible to make cop-adjacent anime interesting (death note) but it's also really easy to make a cop-adjacent anime really fucking boring (also death note). and i think thats part of what happened here. watching this episode felt like a chore

i liked robin as a character! she's interesting! i wish the show would've let me SEE HER, FOR MORE THAN 2 MINUTES AT A TIME. the fucking asshole chief side character that doesnt have a name got more screentime than her.